The London Riots and the Future of Social Media

Like many Londoners, I watched with disbelief as last week’s riots spread like wildfire from inner city Tottenham to the leafy boroughs of Clapham and Ealing and beyond to Manchester and Birmingham. On Thursday, the shops in my neighbourhood boarded up their windows at 4pm in preparation for the rioters to descend, and by 8pm there was an unofficial curfew, leaving the streets eerily deserted.

For residents, the most worrying aspect was how quickly rioters descended en masse and how their actions quickly moved beyond looting — in some areas, residential property and cars were torched and there were isolated incidents of muggings, rapes, and hit-and-run accidents. In the first few days, the police seemed to be on the back foot, not knowing where the rioters would strike next.

Having lived in London through the Brixton riot of 1981 and the Poll Tax riots of 1990, these riots were completely different in tone: they had an ugly, mindless edge, fuelled by greed, opportunism, and criminality rather than any legitimate political or social protest.

While there are many theories for the underlying reasons for the the riots — social inequality, the economic crisis, gang culture, opportunism and the failings of capitalism to name a few — but there is little doubt that technology and social media were the great enablers of the rioters and the criminality that ensued.

According to the Guardian, these were the first riots in the UK to be orchestrated using the private BlackBerry Messenger system. While Facebook and Twitter have featured in previous public disorder, BBM appears to have been used on this ccasion because it enabled the rioters to send encrypted messages and therefore keep one step ahead of the authorities. When BBM messages were reposted on Facebook and Twitter, they spread like wildfire across the internet and the riots fanned out across the country.

Here’s an example of one message: “If you’re down for making money, we’re about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight…I don’t know why its taken so long for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We’re not broke, but who says no to free stuff.”

The Metropolitan Police has admitted that they need to learn lessons from the way social media was used to organise the greed and criminality seen during the riots. But according to David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, it was an accident waiting to happen: “For years we’ve been aware of gangs and football hooligans have been using technology to get together and fight. I think the police have been quite slow to respond to this.”

One interesting development has been the arrest of so-called ‘armchair rioters’ who have used social networking sites to incite violence. Many were bored teenagers wanting to have a stake in the action, but not realising that there it is a crime to incite violent disorder. Some have already been arrested and charged for the offence.

It will be interesting to see how the debate about social media and its implications for civil unrestshapes up this week. Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that the intelligence services and the police were exploring whether it was “right and possible” to cut off those plotting violence, disorder and criminality via social media. Meanwhile, Home Secretary Theresa May will meet representatives from Facebook, Twitter and RIM (maker of the Blackberry) to talk about their obligations during times of unrest.

Any limits to social media are bound to provoke an outcry not only from civil liberties groups, executives and legions of teenagers who use the site for legitimate business and social purposes. Civil Rights campaigners say such a measure would be abused and would attack the civil liberties of people who have done nothing wrong. One commentator even went so far as to compare the government’s response to the Saudi government’s demand to listen to and restrict its BBM networks and China’s censoring of social media.

Fortunately, it is not all doom and gloom here. Social media sites have been embraced by the public to help arrest some rioters, while communities are also using sites to help them regroup and rebuild their lives. People are pulling together across the country not only to clean up (#RiotCleanup) but to rebuild society and ensure that wrongdoers are brought to justice.

While it may be fashionable to talk about the end of times or an irrevocable slide into social disorder, my belief is that London and the other cities caught in the riots will learn from this episode and that communities will to rebuild themselves and start to address some of the deeper underlying social problems. It will be a long and difficult road, but the process has certainly begun and social media will definitely play its part.

So what are your thoughts on social media in such situations? Should sites be protected as powerful means to express individual and collective freedom, as we saw in the revolutions of the Arab Spring? Or should we impose strict limits to its use to protect society from organised crime? Your views sharpen the ideas and debate expands our views, so please pitch in.

Gill Corkindale is an executive coach and writer based in London, focusing on global management and leadership. She was formerly management editor of the Financial Times.